Burger Project – Sydney, Australia

August 5, 2015

On a whim, my friend @burg.her and I decided to go to Sydney together and have a bit of a burger adventure. We got fairly last minute flights, didn’t do a lot of planning (due to our busy lives) and the next thing we knew we were both Sydney. Our first stop was Neil Perry’s Burger Project which we had heard a lot of great things about! So keep reading to learn more!

The Place

The vibe you get from the Burger Project is very corporate, clean white walls, straight furniture, white lighting. It didn’t ring me as very “original” or unique, just like a nicer version of McDonald’s (or Mickey D’s or Macca’s, whatever you fancy to call it). The staff were friendly and there was an open kitchen so you could see what they were doing. To be honest, that’s all I have to say about the place. There was no personality to it and it was a bit strange to me that someone who cares so much about food that the place he opened “for the masses” would ring in just as unoriginal as other fast food joints.

The Menu

The menu was pretty standard and had a good array of burgers (I’ve only screenshotted the burger menu but they also have a sweets menu as well which looks pretty good). The price of all the burgers were good especially considering that all their beef is grass fed and their chickens are free range. I liked the classic-ness of the burgers, keeping things simple, but I thought that maybe they could have made a smaller menu seeing that some of the burgers were very similar except for adding cheese or changing a sauce. Also one thing that was interesting were the “chicken wings” which aren’t dinky little ones like you’re used to, but actual massive wings, which I thought was interesting.

The Burger

So we decided on this trip that we would split our burgers so we could maximize the amount of burger awesomeness that we could fit into our 4 day trip. So we decided to go for the Cheese and Bacon which was just a basic cheeseburger with bacon and their secret sauce. The presentation was lacking and we had to fix it up a bit to make it look nicer for pictures but there was no “wow” factor or anything. It was a bit disappointing considering how much thought I would think they would want to put into it since it was owned by Neil Perry. Despite that, the patty was really flavorful and cooked to a perfect medium. The bun was also really delicious and squishy and didn’t overpower the burger. We felt the salad could have been fresher, our lettuce was a bit limp and I ended up taking it out of the burger when I ate it. The homemade “special sauce” was really great and tangy; it added a lot of great flavor to our burgers and we enjoyed that.

The Verdict

Overall we had a pretty good experience, but we definitely went in with higher expectations. As stated earlier we were hoping for a more “instaworthy” burger and not the flat, fast food type burger that we received. The burger itself was pretty good but nothing that wowed us. I would probably come here again for a quick bite but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have it. The dessert menu sounded pretty good and I wish I had tried something from it because it looked more unique with more complex flavors, unlike their burgers. The chipotle sea salt chips were super yummy!! The fries themselves weren’t anything special (frozen not hand cut) but the flavoring really did add a great flavor to it). I just feel that in terms of how high profile Neil Perry is, that his burger joint would be better executed for burger lovers. It just seems like he wanted to enter the market with a big name but not put a lot of thought into it.